20cal/55gr Berger for Varmint

[Rogue Hunter]

29.5 grains of Varget fills the case a bit more than 3/4's lol!
1-8 twist McGowan.

-Mike

 

[65WSM]

What is your cartridge OAL? We have two .20 BR reamers in our hunting posse. One with a longer lead for the 55 Berger and one for 40gr or less bullets.

Note that Hodgdon has so much faith in the new owners of ADI (French holding Company) that they schemed with General Dynamics to bring out IMR 4166 with the same burn rate. I have always found Varget to provide the slowest velocity of the powders I tried in any cartridge. My cartridges are .17 Rem, .20 PPC, .204 Ruger, 20 BR, .221 Fireball, 223 Rem, .22-250 AI, .22-6.5 Lapua 40 degrees, 6mm PPC, .243 Win, 6mm Rem, 243 WSSM.

I have only pistol experience with a XP-100 factory .221 Fireball. I found that fast double base powders provided the most exciting velocities.

 

[Rogue Hunter]

OAL is 2.205"
I throated it deep to run the 55's.

-Mike

 

[Alycidon]

my 50 grain vmax is a .223 the only 50 grain .204 bullet that I am aware of is a Berger.
If Hornaday did make a 50 grain vmax that would be a High BC bullet. Top that with the 204 having a bit more case capacity than a 223, the ground rats better be very afraid.

Ah I see. The 20 cal Berger 50 has now been discontinued but I have sufficient for this barrel. I use N150, a nice case full of about 29.5gr (from memory) under 50s, to get a fairly similar trajectory curve to 300 yards I use 29.0 under the 39gr SBKs. Loads are very nice to shoot in a 14lb rifle, impacts on targets are visible without the use of a sound moderator.

Need to do some work on 55s but earning a living, and a couple of other areas I am involved with gets in the way.

A

 

[65WSM]

I built a rifle to shoot the 55gr Bergers. It is a 28 inch 8 twist McGowen with an Answer brake so I can see where they hit. So far I have just shot it at the clay bank at 550 yards at my Club. I shoot clay pigeons and paper targets so far. I neck down Norma 6mm BR brass to .20. 20 BR and have experimented with R-17 and VV N-550. I am using the Magnaspeed bayonett chronograph. I get 3626 with 27.9 gr of R-17. The same charge of N-550 is right at 3600 fps. CCI 450 primers.

I regularly split andesite stones in at the range. I often use stones to prop up the the clay pigeons. The stones shatter from the impact. I think these are penetrating bullets. I have had them ricochet off the ground and they skip into the target intact.